Well, as we approached nigher and nigher the wharf we see men dressed in every way you could think on from petticoats to pantaloons, and men of every color from black down through brown and yeller to white, and wimmen the same. Well, it wuzn’t long before we wuz ensconced in the comfortable tarven where we put up. Elder Wessel and his daughter and Evangeline Noble went to the same tarven, which made me glad, for I like ’em both as stars differin’. Elder Wessel I regarded more as one of the little stars in the Milky Way, but Evangeline as one of the big radiant orbs that flashed over our heads in them tropic nights.
The tarven we went to wuz called the Hawaiian Hotel. We got good comfortable rooms, Arvilly’s bein’ nigh to ourn and Dorothy’s and Miss Meechim’s acrost the hall and the rest of the company comfortably located not fur away. Well, the next mornin’ Josiah and I with Tommy walked through some of the broad beautiful streets, lined with houses built with broad verandas most covered with vines and flowers and shaded by the most beautiful trees you ever see, tall palms with their stems round and smooth as my rollin’ pin piercin’ the blue sky, and fur, fur up the long graceful leaves, thirty feet long some on ’em. And eucalyptus and begoniea and algebora with its lovely foliage, and pepper trees and bananas and pomegranates and tamarind and bread fruit and rose apples, tastin’ and smellin’ a good deal like a rosy. And magnificent oleanders and fuchias and geraniums and every other beautiful tree and blossom you ever hearn on.
And take it with these rich colored posies and luxuriant green foliage and the white suits and hats of the men, and the gay colored clothing of the women we met, lots of them with wreaths of flowers round their necks hangin’ most to their feet, take it all together it wuz a seen long, long to be 110 remembered. And then we walked up on Punch Bowl Hill, five hundred feet above the level of the sea, and looked off on a broad beautiful picture of sea, mountain and valley soft and beautiful and a-bloom with verdure, and anon bold, rugged and sublime, and I sez to Josiah:
“This very place where we’re standin’ now wuz once a volcano and belched forth flames, and that also,” sez I, pintin’ to Tantalus that riz up two thousand feet. “And,” sez I, “they say that the view from that is glorious.”
“Well,” sez he, “I guess we hadn’t better climb up there; it might bust out agin. And I wouldn’t have you sot fire to, Samantha, for a thousand worlds like this,” (he didn’t want the work of climbin’, that wuz it). And I didn’t argy with him, for I thought it would be quite a pull for us to git up there and git Tommy up, and I didn’t know as the child ort to climb so fur, so I didn’t oppose my pardner when he propsed to go back to the tarven, and we santered back through the streets filled with citizens of all countries and dressed accordin’, to the grounds around the tarven. We put Tommy into a hammock and sot down peaceful nigh by him. The sun shone down gloriously out of a clear blue sky, but we sot in the shade and so enjoyed it, the bammy air about us seemed palpitating with langrous beauty and fragrance, and I sez to my pardner:
“Don’t this remind you, Josiah, of what we’ve heard Thomas J. read about:
“‘The island valley of Avileon
Where falls not rain nor hail nor any snow.’”
“Where it seems always afternoon.”
“I d’no,” sez Josiah, “as I ever hearn of such a land. I never wuz any hand to lay abed all the forenoon.”